Recent content by etr221

Crewe works was always reluctant over and delayed implementing some of those Midland inspired LMS policies, like painting locos red and putting numbers on the front of locos (on a smoke box door number plate or otherwise) - they were the Premier Line, why should they do what those upstarts from...

The intriguing case used to be the ex-LSWR Windsor Line out to Barnes - while the centre pair of tracks have, AFAIK, always been designated as 'fast' (with the slows outside), for many years they were used by the slow (stopping) trains, with the fast (non-stopping) trains on the slow lines, and...

The Portstewart Tramway (in Northern Ireland, so UK), which had been taken over Belfast & Northern Counties Railway, so later MR(NCC) and LMSR(NCC), lasted until 30 January 1926. The Wisbech and Upwell was, I believe, legally a tramway (the 1870 Tramway Act applied to it), although it appeared...

Something I am surprised has not been mentioned/raised is the extent to which the train was delayed at Bath, once it was discovered that the unfortunate lady was unable to alight as expected. It cannot have been trivial...

The NRM/LCGB Ken Nunn photo collection includes at least one shot of an Ipswich or Yarmouth dock shunter tram engines running light engine up the GE main line en route to or from Stratford Works on a Sunday 120 odd years ago - which I imagine would have been an all day journey, stopping pretty...

I do wonder how many people - even those who perhaps should know, rather than the nerds who actually study such things - could actually just say, and swear to it, from any station whence PAYG (of one or or other system) is valid, whither it (and by what route) is actually valid. Case in point...

The London and Blackwall (L&Bl) was leased by the Great Eastern (I think for 999 years) from 1866, but remained a separate company that was absorbed (as a 'subsidiary company') into the LNER in 1923 - in the meantime its directors had held an annual meeting to declare a substantial dividend...

The RCTS archive I am involved with has an Epson FastFoto scanner which can scan prints at a rate of knots: put in a batch of prints and it feeds them through and scans at about one every second, so, in quantity, about 1000 per hour, if you dedicate yourself to it. So - depending on what you...

Looking in 'A History of London Transport' (Barker and Robbins) there seem to have been various proposals over the years to relieve the Finchley Road-Baker Street bottleneck, trying to come with a scheme that was practicable and affordable. What was done at Edgware Road was perhaps somewhat...

Short answer - because it was designed, back in the 1920s, it was around a very different service specification, that didn't include lots of (if any) terminating trains. And giving flexibility for future developments.

As British railways came first, when they were started there was no such thing as continental loading gauge... So, perhaps two questions: Whether, back in the beginning - the 1820s/1830s - the pioneering British engineers should have chosen a larger loading gauge? Ideally, probably yes... and...

My understanding is that the LPTB Central Line East and LNER Liverpool St-Shenfield electrification schemes were planned together as part of the late 1930s New Works Programme; and so, had they not happened alongside each other as they did, some other scheme to provide for Liverpool...

A lot of TfL (London Underground) stations have CRS codes starting with a Z - without knowing, I assume Farringdon's ZFD goes back to when it was an LT (only) station. So, a question (or a few): when were CRS codes first introduced, and when were they first specified for all stations? Can...

In railway terms (so CRS codes ) the new service is BHM to MIA In IATA speak, it's QQN to MAN (yes, according to Wikipedia, some Railway Stations have IATA codes - QQN is Birmingham New Street) QQM on the other hand is Manchester Piccadilly, whence if you are flying from Birmingham...

For completeness it would also need lines complete but not yet opened (thinking of EWR!), under construction, authorised (to what level? Some lines were authorised (up to a point) for years before being proceeded with or - perhaps more often - abandoned) or proposed (with what degree of...